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Dr Herbert West writes with this from the Wall Street Journal: "Nintendo said Sunday that a server for its US unit's website had been hacked into but that no company or customer information was compromised.
The hacker group Lulzsec, which allegedly was behind other breaches of Sony websites earlier this week, claimed responsibility. Lulzsec posted a server configuration file as proof of its involvement yet said it wasn't targeting Nintendo. 'We just got a config file and made it clear that we didn't mean any harm,' the group said this morning via its Twitter.' Nintendo had already fixed it anyway. The attack comes as Nintendo this week launches its new online service for its 3DS hand-held game machine."

The data is safe because they make you put in your CC info every time you make a purchase, instead of storing the data. This is something that people whine about and say Nintendo is being too cautious about every time they talk about the Wii Shop Channel. Still whining, trolls?

Also, if LulzSec doesn't get taken out soon, I'm fucking gonna find one of them and shit on their head. This is getting ridiculous.

Not only that, but there's no online accounts to access because Nintendo wisely uses only consoles and friend codes. Nintendo actually cares about their customers' privacy. There's basically no data to hack from Nintendo.

Whereas Sony requires you to enter your life's story to use a fucking online service, Nintendo just gives you a short number. You give it to your friends. No accounts to create, no privacy to lose. It's simple, it's easy, it's private, and it's secure.

... or because you can't backup licenses in Mario Kart Wii. After unlocking all the extra tracks, vehicles, and characters for my 5 year old daughter, she somehow manages to delete her license. It has happened twice now.

There is homebrew software that allows you to bypass the copy protection and back up saved games and channels that are blocked from copying in the system software. Google around for instructions on how to install the Homebrew Channel and get started.

EXACTLY! This is why the SD slot was put there! I can't believe people haven't thought about this. ESPECIALLY geeks on Slashdot. Hey guys, you know where the data is stored, you know it's on a removable medium, why don't you save, turn off, and REMOVE IT, then make a copy of the SD card and then stick the thing back in? Your laptop is your Wii backup (assuming it has an SD card reader, which most do.)

Thank you! Christ. Even worse, if you don't make the back-up, it's possible to just go grab a completed file off the internet and throw that on. When I got RE4: Wii Edition, I didn't bother doing the stuff I'd already done a dozen times on my GCN, I just grabbed a save file and played the stuff I hadn't played before. I can't imagine anyone playing through something 3 times for someone else willingly with the only goal of unlocking it when you can just toss a file on instead.

From the page you linked: "Please note that while most game save files can be copied, some titles -- particularly those that have online play -- may not allow for the copying of save files to an SD Card." Every Wii game with WFC play that I own keeps the saved progress and the friend code credentials in the same SD card, and Nintendo doesn't want people copying friend code credentials.

I saw the alleged "anti freedom propaganda." The worst thing you could say about that Frontline episode is that they asked hard questions, and didn't portray the people in the episode as automatic heroes. What propaganda was in that show exactly?

Suggesting that any perspective is the one true way to see something, and denying any other possibility as you do, really makes it sound as though you are the one who has been indoctrinated. You may want to rethink your presentation.

You think the Frontline Wikileaks episode was the sole reason? Sorry, pal, but PBS has done way more than that to harm the causes of freedom in the world, and the Wikileaks episode isn't the only government propaganda their guilty of spewing.

It's the reason why LulzSec did what they did according to security week [securityweek.com]. If you have any additional information, I am genuinely interested.

Also, you appear to have bought the propaganda hook line and sinker. Assange is a hero and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, pure and simple. There is no "other side" to the story, any more than there's an "other side" to the belief that the Earth orbits the Sun.

And it seems you didn't watch the episode in question. Most of it dealt with Mannings, not Assange. The only really critical thing I can recall being mentioned about Assange is that the NY Times and Daniel Domscheit-Berg both mentioned that he was a difficult person to work with. Sure, Frontline did ask him to opine on some of the negative repercussions and views his ac

At this point, I really got to ask, what is your rationale(s) for believing that PBS is propaganda? How are they going aginst The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967?

For what it's worth I do think what Assange is doing is a positive thing overall, but I dislike the word hero. It elevates people to an unrealistic pedestal, and encourages an uncritical view of people that ignores any negatives. It makes us expect too much from those that inherit the title, and to an extent, makes us expect too much from oursel

Assange is a hero and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, pure and simple.

No, he's a dick that had a nice idea. He's still and asshole though. If anyone is a hero in the whole story it would be Manning.

Though, I agree, the Frontline special was a bit moronic. I really doubt that Manning turned leaker only because he was a "troubled gay" like they portrayed. I find it amusing that neither Frontline or Assange actually tried to discus any plausible motive that he had to leak that information.

I'm not sure what your other beef with PBS is... It is leagues better than the network

Hard questions like "is what the US government's doing to Bradley Manning torture", or "hard" questions like "is Bradley Manning a queer pinko faggot who obviously just leaked the info because he's nuts"? I'm guessing the latter... it's what most of the press has been doing.

the Earth orbits the solar barycenter, which is not always inside the surface of the sun

You anti-science propagandist! HEY EVERYBODY! Your.Master doesn't believe the Earth orbits the Sun! He can't be trusted, lets hack his shit for spreading lies on the internet. After all, the only way to deal with information I disagree with is to respond with force!

And I also doubt most of the recent Sony hacks have been vengeance. The first one, yeah, probably, and justifiably so. Everything after that was just petty crooks - they smelled blood in the water, and swarmed.

I have to say, this is the first time the news of LulzSec hacking has actually made me mad. Everything else they've done could be argued to be altruistic, but this is just pointlessly lashing out at anyone they find. I can't think of anything Nintendo has ever done to justify this.

Actually, i wonder if this was intended as a PR move intended to help Nintendo with the primary intent actually being to further damage Sony. Sony's been in the news for weeks for getting hacked multiple times and losing tons of data about customers. Now Nintendo gets hacked, but it's pretty minor and no customer data was compromised. Doesn't that make Sony look even worse in comparison?

We've already got people in this very thread saying this means Nintendo's way of doing things is better Sony's. I'm not going to take sides on that issue, but if LulzSec's goal was to get people to criticize Sony in comparison to Nintendo then they seem to have succeeded.

Good point, and i just realized a third aspect. Now that Nintendo has been hacked it may even reduce the odds of them getting hacked again in the future. The main reasons for hacking a place are for the prestige/challenge, for profit, because of a grudge, or, well, just for the lulz. Sony seems to be getting hit for profit and for grudges, and possibly for lulz as well (haha, it's funny to kick them when they're down.)

At least from what other people have been saying it sounds like LulzSec hit Nintendo jus

Stop pretending that the members of lulz security, operation anon, anonymous, 4chan, whatever you call them; are part of some sort of moral higher ground. They hacked nintendo get steal valuable information. plain and simple. Any other motives they pretend to have are contrary to their actions. Vigilante groups like them will just lead to harsher regulation laws that hurt people like me, the consumer and benefit corporations like the one they're supposedly fighting.

Stop pretending that all those groups (and even the members within a single group) belong to some kind of monolithic homogenous whole. Anonymous definitely did a DDOS on Sony due to a grudge. They may also have hacked Sony for profit, or some other group may have hacked Sony for profit at the same time. And other people do hack sites just for the lulz or the challenge. It's not clear at this point if that's all LulzSec is in it for, but they certainly didn't get any profit out of devoting effort to taking d

Agreed. But if you are a Sony customer who has been affected by the outage, and you have every right to be angry at being affected, then you should also be asking yourself why Sony had such little resilience and backup in place such that the outage you suffered was not more than a few hours, rather than a whole month.

Once the data was stolen, Sony could do nothing but let their customers know the risks of that data getting out into the open and then securing their systems to stop it happening it again. They

Actually, no, because any competent hacker would already know if data worth stealing would exist on the system. Knowing how Nintendo works, they already know that there's no data. There never was, and as long as Nintendo keeps the system the same, there never will be.

Nintendo consoles are made by Foxconn in China and Nintendo does not release any public information about how or if they assure that human rights abuses are not taking place. Do they use underage workers, workers forced to work unacceptably long hours, and workers forced to work in dangerous conditions? Maybe, probably, but we sure don't know and Nintendo isn't performing and publishing audits of third world manufacturing facilities and telling us when they stop doing business because of abuses (as a very f

Yes, these abuses are bad, but what would the alternative be? Massive poverty and unemployment. The problem isn't Nintendo, but is rooted in the Chinese government and the Chinese culture. Without large companies like Foxconn, the alternative most likely wouldn't be a higher standard of living, but instead would be more agricultural work, which is often more dangerous and almost always pays lower than factory work.

It's the "VHS vs. Betamax" argument once again - Betamax was technically a better system but VHS had porno movies and that's why Joe Public favoured VHS.

I'm ready to stand corrected but I'd be very surprised if any electronics manufacturer today wasn't having assembly done in China where human rights abuses are probably taking place on the factory floors.

But the fact is, Joe Public just sees CDs that he cannot rip on his computer, horror stories of secretly installed Sony rootkits, and some option to boot L

Also it's fast. I needed like 1-2 hours to get a 360 connected to the internet and ready to download demos and stuff, the Wii shows you the TOS and lets you into the store. No need to make three different accounts and deal with email verification and whatnot.

Nintendo actually cares about their customers' privacy... I can't think of anything Nintendo has ever done to justify this.

This is the company that got their Wii hacked because they couldn't implement RSA (They chose to do a string comparison where binary was needed).

Also the same guys that keep trying to kill off homebrew and go around harassing the homebrew devs.

They would be hard pressed to be more anti consumer, but I bet we see a better attempt anyway with the Wii's successor. Me thinks you've been imbibing of the coolaid, or you're a Wii fanboi, or a Nintendo astroturf monkey.

What maker has been effective at stopping them by harassing people.
Honestly, go after the pirates, not the tinkerers.

Homebrew feeds piracy, while homebrew itself is fine and dandy it exposes raw hardware which can easily be used for pirate methods (see wii usb loaders everywhere, which while they do serve a valid purpose for reducing loading times I imagine a fair number of people have a few games they don't legitimately own from tpb)

Their aim is not to stop homebrew outright, but just make the barrier of entry higher. With a sufficiently high barrier of entry to playing with it tinkerers will simply be more determined an

Homebrew feeds piracy, while homebrew itself is fine and dandy it exposes raw hardware which can easily be used for pirate methods (see wii usb loaders everywhere, which while they do serve a valid purpose for reducing loading times I imagine a fair number of people have a few games they don't legitimately own from tpb)

Their aim is not to stop homebrew outright, but just make the barrier of entry higher. With a sufficiently high barrier of entry to playing with it tinkerers will simply be more determined and the people who think 'I just want to play burnt games' are more likely to simply not bother.

What you are arguing is essentially that no one should ever be able to tinker with their own hardware because it may compromise the platform. The same argument can be made against home programming on the PC. Yet copy protection schemes exist on the PC, some of which have not been cracked (but all of which seem to catch out legitimate users too). So it is possible to have hardware and software exposed to the user for play but to still secure games from being copied. Stifling innovation, tinkering and free sp

What you are arguing is essentially that no one should ever be able to tinker with their own hardware because it may compromise the platform.

Not really, tinker to your hearts content, but don't expect a company in whose best interests it is in to cut you out to make it _easy_ for you.

The same argument can be made against home programming on the PC.

If I buy a locked out pc (a.k.a console) I don't expect them to make it easy for me to do my own things. Sure I can do my own things anyway, and they can't stop me, doesn't mean they have to make it easy for me since after all I bought the device locked down knowingly of my own will.

Stifling innovation, tinkering and free spirit is way too high a price to pay to protect some company's intellectual property.

You cannot stop tinkering, but you are buying locked out hardware and bitching that

I don't see life being that much harder for pirates at all. Locked out hardware which you then sell to the user to own is just an idiotic concept. Someone out there will have the tools to break it. Once broken they'll facilitate others with lesser tools, or sell mod chips. It has never worked. It is just moronic. All these megacorps have created is ill will and people unwilling to buy the next gen of console. Then they lament that the games industry is dying.

I think the answer you are looking for is Microsoft [winextra.com]. They've made it the easiest to write games for their console, and actually supported hacking the kinect to work on PCs by releasing drivers and working on a forthcoming SDK.

The problem here is that online games on Nintendo platforms don't give me the choice to host a game for anyone who has added my friend code or whose friend code I have added. It works only for mutual friends: anyone who has added my friend code and whose friend code I have added.

"The data is safe because Nintendo doesn't provide the same level of service as Sony", is somehow turned into "the data is safe because Sony is a bad company and Nintendo is good".

One of the really funny things about defending the way Nintendo does it is that if you buy a new console, you can't even redownload your purchases. With Sony, you just log in with your PSN ID, and download away! Isn't that usually the argument against online purchases? That you have to re-buy everything? Yet since Sony is the one doing it right, you guys find no trouble contorting yourself to make it look like it's the other way around.

And this is clearly an attempt by LulzSec to make Nintendo look good and Sony look bad, by the very same double-standard. They say they didn't want to hurt Nintendo. But they clearly wanted to hurt Sony. So they tried to hurt Sony, but didn't try to hurt Nintendo, but the headline reads as though Nintendo was hacked, but their security kept customer data safe, when reality is that there was no customer data to steal, and LulzSec didn't seem interested in doing any damage other than to prove they were there.

As a company, I like Nintendo much more than Sony, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of reality. In terms of online offerings and capabilities, Sony is way ahead of Nintendo. Spinning this as a good thing is just absurd.

One of the really funny things about defending the way Nintendo does it is that if you buy a new console, you can't even redownload your purchases

Call up Nintendo's tech support and you can transfer games if your other console breaks.

When it comes to Nintendo's DS line, nearly all DSi games can be transfered to the 3DS, with the exception of 11 games that either are getting re-made to take advantage of the new hardware (flipnote studio), had security flaws (sodoku) or had complex licensing (oregon trail).

And I have no doubt that when Project Cafe is released, the same thing will work with Wii Ware and Virtual Console titles.

The difference isn't really a technical thing, but the way that Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft look at consoles. Nintendo views consoles as something where (except in rare cases where one breaks) you really only buy one until they release the new version.

On the other hand, Sony/Microsoft view consoles as something to upgrade midway through the lifecycle (the new slim models of the PlayStation line, the new version of the Xbox). So it makes sense that Sony/MS makes it more straightforward to redownload things because they expect a large segment of their gamers to get the new console when it launches.

I don't think Sony expects many people to upgrade to a slim PS3, just as I don't think Nintendo expects many people to switch to a black Wii. And if you want to talk upgrade cycles, let's talk about Game Boys and DSs!

You're doing exactly what I'm talking about. Taking something and flipping it on its head solely in order to maintain the "Sony sucks, Nintendo is good" concept.

And on upgrade cycles for DS/game boy Nintendo hasn't given up backwards compatibility which was the original argument that with upgrades you lost things you purchased. For example, despite 3 entries in the original game boy line (Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, and the Game Boy Light which was only available in Japan) they were all compatible with the same games and accessories (the link cable did need a dongle to fit the smaller link port, but that was it), the original game boy line lasted from 1989 to 1998 (

True, but the GBA Micro was an odd release (really didn't add much to the SP and the DS was already out at the time) and really didn't sell too well, and when the Micro was released, you could still buy a backwards compatible SP, even today Nintendo is still making the DS Lite, allowing you to still have backwards compatibility with GBA games. There are few, if any, DS games out there that require a DSi to play, with of course the exception of the games in the DSi electronic store. So if someone wanted to g

Compare to the PSP. From PSP-1000 to PSP-2000, the console was slighty smaller. And nothing else. From the PSP-2000 to PSP-3000, they introduced a broken screen that added weird artifacts that Sony has never fixed and... nothing else.

The PSP 2000 and 3000 have more RAM than the 1000, the 2000 and 3000 both have TV out, which the 1000 doesn't, the 3000 can even output to SD sets. The 2000 and 3000 can also do skype, the 1000 can't. the 3000 even has a built in microphone.

The 3000 screen is MUCH better than the 1000 screen, it has better color and it's brighter. There are no artifacts, just some stupidly anal fanboys who "think" they see artifacts, just to have something complain about.

The extra RAM and microphone are also entirely useless. Games can't use them. They're meaningless.

There's a setting on the 2000 and 3000 models that lets games use it as cache so they don't hit the UMD as often. It also helps the web browser. The microphone CAN be used in games that have voice chat, or with Talkman.

And the PSP-3000 is on display at most "big box" stores. I've seen the screen and the artifacts it generates. It's awful. It's easily the worst screen I've ever seen. It renders the entire thing completely unplayable.

I'm a security guy and I think they are doing a great service for everyone... companies house a lot of very personal and private information and it is so common that they do not protect it or nowhere near to the level they should because they either do not fund it since they see no value in protecting it properly or they have short staffed their security/IT dept. so much that they can't have proper security. No matter what, burying you head in the sand or hoping they go away is the WORST possible option. Th

Also, if LulzSec doesn't get taken out soon, I'm fucking gonna find one of them and shit on their head. This is getting ridiculous.

Okay, I'll take a guess here and say you're a disgruntled PS3 user who's angry at not being able to get onto the PSN for over a month - and, quite frankly, if you're not getting a service you've paid for, you've every right to be hacked off about it. If you're not, then I apologise in advance.

Furthermore, I work in system security and whilst I'm grateful to hackers for creating

About five to ten years ago, out of boredom, I was trying to log in to various web servers via FTP. Some of Nintendo's allowed anonymous login that allowed one to traverse files on a few different networks. I don't recall how the setup was, but I do recall being able to see files on different lettered drives (C: drive, Z: drive, things like that). There were various files such as orignal artwork files in PSD formats for various video game artworks. We're talking original files, where when you view them

That's their PR service for magazines and such. They keep it behind a password now, but it's still a bulk account that gets handed out, usually around E3. Sometimes the credentials leak and we get glimpses of press releases for unannounced games, embargoed stuff, full res artwork and everything.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing. They built their service in a way that doesn't keep information that would endanger the public if it were compromised. Do they deal with transactions? Yes they do, did they consider it a good idea to keep the CC#'s? No because if they were hacked that would have been bad. The general rule should be, if you aren't sure you can keep the data safe, you shouldn't be hanging onto it. Nintendo and Sony both decided it wasn't worth the time and money to secure the information.

They just got pulled down to Sony's level. Their security is just as bad given that they have been successfully hacked as well.

It just that their service is so bare-bones, there is nothing to steal.

Security is not about locking every single door you can find. It's about making sure that any sensitive stuff you have is properly locked down. Making sure you don't have anything worth stealing is good security. Storing credit card info on an insecure server is very bad security.

So Nintendo's security is still way better than Sony's. It may not be perfect, but nothing is. At least Nintendo is aware that their security may not be perfect, and they made sure a breach wouldn't compromise sensitive data like c

I wonder if this has anything to do with the FSF's "Brick Nintendo" [defectivebydesign.org] campaign [defectivebydesign.org]. Perhaps the hacker in question was trying to further the FSF's efforts with regard to bringing attention to the super-draconian TOS of the 3DS, but in the wrong way of course. Since this is not "Anonymous" it makes me think that the answer to the former hypothesis is "no" and this is just another immature teenager up to stupid sh*t.

Oh, BTW, have you bought and sent your bricks [defectivebydesign.org] yet?

I doubt that it has anything to do with "Brick Nintendo" because out of all the companies, Nintendo is easily the most homebrew friendly. Yes, Nintendo has released a few pointless updates to the Wii simply to prevent homebrew to be run, but they are few and far between, but a console running homebrew still can do all the things an unmodded console can do. Modified Xbox consoles can't access Microsoft's online service without risking being banned. And the PS3 has had multiple features disabled in the name o

out of all the companies, Nintendo is easily the most homebrew friendly.

Then please explain Nintendo's lack of anything even remotely like Microsoft's App Hub and Xbox Live Indie Games. For example, Nintendo rejected Bob's Game solely because it was developed at home, as opposed to in an office. Microsoft, on the other hand, encourages home development; its most significant requirement that I can see is that a game has to be written from the ground up for Microsoft platforms.

Because Nintendo is a company born out of the video game crash of the early '80s and fears their systems being overwhelmed with crap games that no one wants (though, I guess it is happening with the Wii/NDS that has about 21312312 Sudoku/crossword games, but they all sell fairly well so its no problem for Nintendo), because of that they have a (rather archaic policy) of only giving SDKs to established companies. Bob's game is more of the exception than the rule, one only needs to own a smartphone to see tha

Yes, there are some gems in the world of indie games like Angry Birds and Castle Crashers, but the vast majority of indie "games" are unplayable crap.

Which raises two questions. First, how does one determine whether a particular game is "unplayable crap"? And second, once my team has developed something that is noticeably better than said "unplayable crap" yet isn't in a genre suitable for the exclusively touch-based input of phones, can you recommend a guide to establishing a company to market it?

a flash cart, which can be found even at Wal-mart.

Yes, for a time Wal-Mart sold Datel's "Games 'n Music" flash card for DS, and my sister bought one. But I haven't seen anything like them in a Walmart store la

Which raises two questions. First, how does one determine whether a particular game is "unplayable crap"?

Get any iOS or Android device and search through the games section, for more fun pick your favorite genre, go to an unfiltered category (as in, not top rated, or editors pick or anything like that, but just the newest releases) and download a few games, and see how many of them are adequate and how many of them are broken either gameplay wise (bad physics, unbalanced gameplay, etc.) or technologically broken (crashes, lags, etc.).

If you are lucky you might find a few gems, but I think you will find th

see how many of them are adequate and how many of them are broken either gameplay wise (bad physics, unbalanced gameplay, etc.) or technologically broken (crashes, lags, etc.)

Technologically broken should be easy to define. I found one Android game that's technologically broken (Cordy), but that's because I played it on an Archos 43 with a resistive single-touch screen, and the game's control uses onscreen buttons that depend on the capacitive multitouch screen found in most Android-powered phones. As for broken gameplay-wise, is there a standard for defining "bad physics, unbalanced gameplay, etc." that the mainstream video game industry follows?

If they wanted to make it easy to do homebrew, they'd allow it as built-in functionality. Instead, they keep on trying to lock users out of their devices, and keep going after the companies that allow homebrew (and piracy, because Nintendo doesn't separate the two).

I never said that they fully embraced homebrew, but lets look at the three competitors.

Sony which sued someone for creating software to jailbreak the PS3, removed functionality to use third party controllers and disabled features included in the PS3 from day one (OtherOS feature) to prevent people from modifying their PS3.

Microsoft which locks out people running modified software from accessing xbox live along with destroying functionality offline (can't access Windows Media, can't add stuff to HDD)

Microsoft at least has an official homebrew methodology. That's more than can be said for Nintendo.

It's also rather disingenuous to say Nintendo "lets people use homebrew as they please", as they have repeatedly blocked the various ways that people came up with to run homebrew, including deleting any homebrew they found on system updates. About the only thing they don't do is ban people from online.

It is like every other authentication system, if it was one per hour and someone who has a job maintaining and running the servers made a typo, the company would be out of quite a bit of money and time. Oddly enough, a secure password is pretty easy to make typos when you are typing a password like ZH72$uew36fwz*eiwJjewiwifaghe32^.

Um... That was exactly the AC's point. The imprecision of the Wii controller made it more secure. (not a terribly funny joke to begin with, but if you're going to continue it, may as well get it right)

If they were, as you say, running Linux like Sony then that would possibly serve to explain a scenario where Nintendo were hacked in an identical way to Sony.

However, in this case, Nintendo did not suffer the same fate as Sony - therefore I can only assume that either:

a) the hackers were unsuccessful in their attempt to hack Nintendo, in which case it might be concluded that this was because Nintendo use an entirely different OS set up to Sony to which the hackers have less expe

If you are running servers that face the internet and you have pissed off major hacker organizations, you will be compromised. It makes no difference if you are running the newest patched versions because the majority of them have exploits that have not been patched and may not even be discovered by the developers of the software, especially with large, popular pieces of software such as Apache.

You are far less likely to have a serious breach even under fire. Correct everything that can be accessed can be compromised, but the weaknesses are not necessarily known to every group of hackers. Do you think no large organized hacking groups take shots at google, microsoft, amazon etc...? Sure none have a 100% perfect rating, but more or less deflected at least 99.9% of attacks, even from organized groups. By your logic there would be a full list of all of the CC#'s for amazon.com online after the wikile